Carluccio’s Garrick Street, Covent Garden London WC2E 9BH
I had been to Carluccios once previously. Although that was a couple of years ago, my recollection is that this restaurant did quite good pasta. On this occassion though, it was for an office Christmas lunch, so my expectations weren’t high.
From a limited menu (that we had to pre-select from) I chose a vegetarian platter as starter, Bistecca di Bue con Patate for the main course, and Pasticcio di Cioccolato as dessert.
Great vegetarian platter
Bistecca di Bue con Patate
The starter was really quite good, with very nice fresh foccacio bread and a variety of peppers, olives and mozarella. Unfortunately, the main course wasn’t so good. The steak was a very thin cut and rather fatty, overcooked and very tough. I abandoned it after just a couple of bites. It came with a sort of creamy tomato sauce that would have been better with pasta, but definitely did not improve the steak.
Pasticcio di Cioccolato
Dessert was a chocolate bread pudding. It was a welcome relief after the steak, but actually also not very good. It was cold and rather soggy.
Overall, it was a disppointing meal, with only the starter worth eating. Christmas set menus for office parties are notoriously poor, and this one was no exception. It doesn’t make me inclined to try this restaurant again.
Zizzi Italian Restaurant 73-75 The Strand London WC2R 0DE
Nice cold Peroni beer
We go quite regularly to the Zizzi on the Strand, since it is close to the office but it has been over two months since the last review. I feel I had to post a new review since I saw a comment by someone complaining about the service for non-native English speakers, the food and the price (!). I too am a non-native English speaker but have not had a single problem at this restaurant. By the way, not many waiters at this Zizzi are native English speakers… They seem mostly to be from Poland or Italy according to their accent. As for the “rubbish food”, well it all depends on people’s taste but personally I find Zizzi quite decent and I have been in many restaurants. Still, everyone is entitled to their opinion. But what I find funny is when the whinger says “it could be, and should be much better taking into consideration the price” I almost choked on my can of coke laughing. First, a meal costs around £8-12 at Zizzi and this one is located in the Strand, which is not exactly the cheapest area in London. You pay the same price at any Zizzi so this one at least is offering a better value for money compared to the ones located in less desirable places. Second, even in absolute Zizzi is quite cheap: you eat well, the surrounding is not bad and air conditioning is nice when it is hot. Cheaper, is the McDonalds next door. Third, Zizzi offers discounts all the time! For example, the current offer allows you to buy any main meal and get another one for only £1! It is valid Sunday to Thursday until Sunday 11th October 2009. Just go to http://zizzi.co.uk to see the latest offers.
Pizzas cotto e funghi
Well, back to the review now. We ordered 2 pizzas cotto e funghi (£8.50 + £1 for the second pizza with their current deal), a bottle of San Pellegrino 500ml (£2.15) and a bottle of Peroni beer (£3.20). We chose that kind of pizza since we quite liked it last time we reviewed the place. It was good this time too, with a nice thin crispy base. The toppings were good, and we especially like the mushrooms and the creamy mascarpone
Cost and conclusion: It was less than £15 for two people. All tips and gratuities are discretionary at Zizzi and they really are since they are not automatically added to the bill. Great pizzas, very reasonable prices, excellent location for us but also for all the tourists visiting Covent Garden or Trafalgar Square where tourist traps are the norm.
Peninsula Italian restaurant Lotte Hotel, 1 Songong-dong | Jung-gu, Seoul 100-070 South Korea
Overview
We ate a second time in the Peninsula restaurant at Lotte Hotel. This was mostly because by this time, we’d eaten quite a lot of Korean food and – even though it was good – we were just ready for a change and needed something nearby. It’s hard to get closer than a restaurant within the hotel you’re staying in, so we decided to choose amongst the options offered in-house. The Lotte hotel has Korean, Japanese & Italian restaurants, a French buffet (which didn’t look very French to me – unless dim sum has been reinvented as French cuisine) and a British pub. We decided on the Italian restaurant for a second time, as our first experience there had been decent.
Creamy pumkin soup
The meal started again with their excellent bread, with olive oil and balsamic for dipping. This time, instead of pizza, I opted for a soup (creamy pumpkin) which was recommended to me by my companion who’d taken it last time, followed by an Australian sirloin steak. We chose a bottle of New Zealand Cloudy Bay Pinot Noir, 2007 to accompany the meal. This was mainly out of curiosity – Cloudy Bay is well known for its sauvignon blanc and several other white wines, as is the Marlborough region of New Zealand in general. Increasingly though, pinot is being produced in Marlborough, so we decided to try it.
Australian sirloin steak
My pumpkin soup was fantastic – really very creamy and with an excellent sweet (but not too sweet!) pumkin flavour. It made me wish I’d tried it the previous time we ate here. The second course was an Australian sirloin steak, which was fantastic – perfectly cooked, slightly charred on the outside to give it lots of flavour, nice and pink on the inside retaining all its moisture and tenderness. Really an excellent piece of meat. I like the Korean habit of writing on the menu the origin of the main parts of every dish, as it helps the diner to make informed choices about what you’re about to order.
Cost and conlusion: the bill was 295,000 Korean won (about £145) for three starters, two main courses and the bottle of Pinot Noir. Not cheap, but considering the good quality of the meat, the wine and the excellent preparation of every dish, I consider that to be good value for money. If I’m ever back in this hotel, I would certainly eat this meal again.
Italian restaurant Peninsula Lotte Hotel, 1 Songong-dong | Jung-gu, Seoul 100-070 South Korea
Spacious restaurant
Nice distance between the tables
I ate in the Peninsula “Italian Trattoria” restaurant at the Lotte Hotel shortly after arriving there. Why Italian in Korea? No particular reason – except that just after a +15 hour journey, it looked more simple and relaxing than any of the (many) other restaurants in this large hotel. In keeping with my desire for something simple, I took a pizza.
Mega CC beer
The meal started with a basket of freshly baked bread. This came with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping. The bread was excellent – wonderfully fresh, crispy outside and moist in the middle. I could have just eaten that and would have been happy With it, we both took a local beer called Mega CC which was very cold and refreshing. Our starters were a salad (nice and fresh) and a creamy pumpkin soup – which my colleague reported to be excellent.
Calzone pizza
Whilst my colleague chose pasta, I decided on a simple calzone pizza – with four kinds of cheese. It came in one piece, but the waiter cut it in slices in front of me (not needed, as I would never eat pizza with my fingers in a restaurant). Sadly this restaurant didn’t have chilli oil, though the pizza came already drizzled with olive oil. Overall, it wasn’t at all bad. I figured I was probably taking a bit of a risk with pizza this far away from Italy, and it wasn’t exactly the light and crispy pizza base I most like. But at the same time, it was far from the thick, stodgy bread base that ruins many a good pizza. So overall, I left quite happy.
Cost & conclusion: The bill for two starters, one pizza, one pasta dish and two beers came to 246,000 Korean won (about £120). That is certainly far from cheap, and without any doubt I could have got better and cheaper by going outside. It’s hard to talk about value for money in a hotel restaurant though, and there is a price to be paid for convenience.
Italian restaurant Bucci 195 Balham High Road London SW12 9BE
We had already tried Bucci, but it had been at lunchtime when pizzas are not available unfortunately. We enjoyed their set menus and finding this Italian restaurant in Balham was a quite nice discovery. Are the pizzas great as well?
Bucci pizza and calzone
There is a large choice of pizzas at Bucci, 19 to be precise! We decided on the Bucci pizza (tomato, mozzarella, parma ham, parmesan and rocket – £8.50) to try their specialty, and the Calzone tradizionale (tomato, mozzarella, ham and mushroom – £7.90) as we are into these folded pizzas. There are three different calzones, the other two being the Farcito (tomato, mozzarella, ricotta cheese and spinach – £7.90) and the Cantadino (tomato, mozzarella, roasted courgette, aubergine and peppers – £7.90), both vegetarian pizzas.
Other pizzas we were interested by were the Tonno (tomato, mozzarella, tuna, olives and cappers – £7.90), the Aldo pizza (tomato, mozzarella, ham, mascarpone cheese and radicchio -£8.10), the Caprinba (cherry tomato, mozzarella, asparagus, goat cheese and rocket – £8.50) and the Parmigiana (tomato, mozzarella, aubergines, peppers and olives – £8.10).
Calzone tradizionale
The calzone was quite a disappointment. It was not at all crispy, lacked flavour, and arrived leaking some fluid (presumably from the mushrooms). The filling was minimal, with much of the space inside taken up by hot air leaving you feeling as though you’ve only been half fed. It’s not a pizza I’ll try again, and doesn’t come close to Limoncello a short distance away down near Tooting Broadway.
The Bucci pizza by contrast, but also in absolute, was huge. Normally I can finish a pizza but here I had to leave some of it. Well, not that much as I managed to eat maybe 85% of it! While I found it good, it lacked something to make it memorable, probably because of the taste of the base or the lack of it too. At Pizzeria Rustica in Richmond with the pizza Buffalo which is similar the base is wonderfully crispy and the tomato sauce (added after the base has been cooked) feels incredibly fresh with little bits of tomato and herbs.
Cost and conclusion: it was £21.60 without service charge and it is not automatically added to the bill. A big grazie to Bucci for respecting their customers!
Compared to Double Espresso a few doors down, I think Double Espresso pizzas have a better base but the décor is a lot nicer at Bucci. Both have a friendly service. That said, if you are into pizzas, two tube stops away, not far from Tooting Broadway you have Limoncello which is probably the best pizzeria in the Balham and Tooting areas. If it is about Italian food other than pizza, Bucci is a decent choice with excellent and well priced meals. Click here for our previous review of Bucci. Other restaurants reviewed in the area are Lamberts, the Cattle Grid, and a little further Hope & Spice and Harrison’s.
